


Lucretia Adventurezone Huge Jorts

by starmaid



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, me but as cloak kermit: hehehheh, me: dont put lupcretia in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-28 16:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13907454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmaid/pseuds/starmaid
Summary: But there’s not going to be any more cycles. Things that get lost now will stay lost forever.sad pizza with left jorts





	Lucretia Adventurezone Huge Jorts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cinnamonsnaps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/gifts).



> For the TTAADD discord fanwork exchange. I had you Scottie!! Hope you enjoy <3
> 
>  
> 
> _Prompt: Sad content of Lucretia remembering THB but they don’t remember her yet._

Lucretia was alone.

This wasn’t new. And it certainly didn’t upset her. At least, not usually. She enjoyed her own company. Enjoyed quiet. But it had been a long time since she’d known true quiet and solitude, and today was one of those in which she found it hard to settle.

She tried several times to read her notes from the night before only to find herself up and pacing her office, or else staring dumbly out the window at the moon base far below, counting Bureau employees as they came and went about their business.

Lucretia enjoyed being alone. But never before had she felt so _lonely_.

Sighing, she forced herself back to her desk, pushing her unread notes away and pulling a stack of paperwork towards her. She managed to work diligently for an hour or so, signing her name here, an initial there, stamping the Bureau’s symbol on document after document. Tedious work, really, though it normally satisfied her to get it done. It was necessary if she wanted her organisation to flourish. If she wanted the relics found and retrieved.

For some reason, it just wasn’t doing it for her today.

An unexpected knock at her office door caused Lucretia’s soul to make a bid for the astral plane. Her elbow knocked her ink pot, spilling deep black ink across her desk, papers and all. It dribbled over the edge and onto her robes. She sprang to her feet with an exasperated noise.

“Davenport?” The gnome and former captain of the Starblaster poked his head around the door. He was holding a tray stocked with a teapot and two cups, and was looking at Lucretia with mild, bemused, yet wholly polite and unfamiliar concern.

It was a rotten day.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Lucretia said, her tone stiffer than she’d intended it to be.

“Davenport?” he said again, with a slightly different inflection. He lifted the tray higher.

Lucretia forced a smile. “Maybe later.”

He peered at her a moment longer before nodding and withdrawing from the room, closing the door after him with a click.

When he was gone, Lucretia pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. It just didn’t get any easier, did it?

_Breathe. Don’t think about it. One day, hour, minute, second at a time._

Deciding it would best serve her to get changed into fresh clothes, she took herself into the adjoining room, where she slept. The desk she’d sort out later, once she’d cooled off. It was likely she’d overworked herself. Davenport himself used to say…

_Don’t._

Lucretia’s bedroom was small, functional. A futon along one wall. Several books piled beside it with a lamp for reading by. An easel, a dozen brushes, two paint boxes; unopened. No canvas. It had been a while since she’d allowed herself to paint.

She opened her wardrobe and unhooked a simple blue dress. It was as she was about to pull it on that she caught sight of a hot pink something-or-other crumpled in a shoebox on the wardrobe floor.

 _Oh,_ that _garish old thing._

It had been Lup’s. Or maybe Taako’s. They’d often argued over who wore it best, when the reality was it looked hideous on both of them. The twins had found increasingly elaborate ways to gift the ugly thing to one another each cycle, every time with some stupid line like, “Oh, it goes so well with your complexion, babe!”

Eventually the awful garment had made its way around the rest of the crew. Magnus had flexed the sleeves off, Barry had stretched it, Merle had stank it up, Davenport had been burned alive in it _twice_ … And Lucretia? Well, she supposed she’d worn it her fair share of times, too.

There are things in life that one tends to take for granted. Unblocked noses, for one. Birdsong. Cold drinks on a summer day. The way frost touches spider webs, or the sun dapples the ground as it peeks through leaves and swaying branches. And this… this garish hot pink sweater with one sleeve longer than the other and a splodge of what she _hoped_ was ketchup on the left breast? This was one of those things.

Lucretia had taken this sweater for granted for a whole century. Its presence, like her friends’ – no, her _family_ ’s – was something she’d never had to question in regards to its permanence. For those hundred years, even if it were lost, by the next cycle it would be returned intact.

_But there’s not going to be any more cycles. Things that get lost now will stay lost forever._

So she would keep it safe, like she kept _them_ safe.

Lucretia hung her dress back up, crouched, and took the sweater from the box. She held it to her nose and inhaled.

_Ah, lavender. Lup._

Lucretia slipped the sweater on. It was scratchy and uncomfortable yet she couldn’t help but smile, bringing the collar up over her nose and burying her face in it, breathing deep.

_Don’t think. Just breathe._

After a moment, Lucretia dragged the entire shoebox out. She carried it to the futon and wiggled around to get comfy amidst her blankets and pillows.

And then, for the first time since she’d collected them all, she started rifling through the box’s contents.

There was Taako’s glittery notebook, covered in Fantasy Backstreet Boys stickers and magazine cut-outs of Fantasy Britney Spears, painstakingly arranged to aesthetic perfection and complete with matching pen; a pom-pom at its crown.

Lucretia hadn’t ever looked in the notebook, didn’t have any desire to invade Taako’s privacy, but when she’d gone looking for keepsakes aboard the Starblaster, this was the one thing of his she’d felt most drawn to.

Taako, she remembered fondly, had had a decades-long habit of declaring people “fit for the book”. This could mean anything from “this guy is hot and I need to document his facial features in extreme detail” or “Merle farted on me again and I have to shame him.”

Of course the pages reset after every cycle. Lucretia did wonder what Taako had written in there this time around, if anything. Who had he deemed “fit for the book”? Who had treated him well, who had wronged him?

 _Who’s doing so_ now _?_

_Breathe._

She didn’t give in to temptation. She merely stroked the spine and set the book aside, patting the cover affectionately as she did so.

Turning her attention back to the box, she snorted out a laugh. Sniggering, she drew out a pair of jorts with the words “BOTTOM TEXT” embroidered across the ass.

“Now, who could’ve done this?”

Lucretia. Lucretia had done it.

The jorts were a more recent memento. Lup had come to her one evening, barely able to suppress giggles, and _begged_ for her help.

“Write it all loopy and shit,” Lup had said. And she’d looked so beautiful, so very vibrant and alive and full of mischief, and her idea was so magnificently awful, that Lucretia found it impossible to deny her.

Barry had both hated and adored Lucretia’s handiwork. He’d worn the fuckers for a week straight before Davenport threatened to destroy them. After that he only wore them in bed, Lup had confided.

Lucretia pulled the jorts on. They were far too large on her, but it didn’t matter.

Next her fingers met a glass case, and she brought out Merle’s most prized possession.

It looked unremarkable at first glance. And second, and third. A small, flat structure made of wood, with three prongs coming off a circular central pad. The wood was painted a sickly shade of green.

Merle had been in possession of this thing - he called it his “spinner” - for as long as Lucretia had known him. Early on he’d had it with him often, holding it between thumb and forefinger and spinning the prongs. He certainly hadn’t always kept it in the case; that came after he successfully launched it at a vicious water monster (cycle number fifty-two, if her memory served her). The monster had taken the spinner directly to its throat, where it broke the flesh and became lodged, spinning with every breath the monster took until, finally, it dropped dead.

After that, and after they’d all made it back to the ship with the Light and Merle had successfully changed his pants, he had taken his framed Kenny Chesney CD down from above his bed, removed the CD, and rammed the spinner in there, pride of place. From then on he started every cycle doing just that; a solemn ritual. Once he even broke the CD for emphasis, an act he immediately regretted.

Lucretia took the spinner out. She toyed with it, spinning it thoughtfully, almost with reverence. She held it to her ear, listened to the faint whir. It reminded her so intensely of the countless evenings they’d spent together in the common area of the ship. Playing board games, telling stories, drinking (not her or Davenport, of course), eating food the twins had prepared. All with this lazy whirring as the backdrop.

Occasionally someone, sometimes all of them at once, got overwhelmed. Perhaps due to too much drink, or perhaps simply the knowledge of their burden grew too prominent within their minds, or perhaps even a great helping of both. Many times they’d cried because _lord_ was this whole thing hard, so hard, and there was so much responsibility on their shoulders...

_Breathe._

She missed them. Profoundly. Back then she could cry with them, on their shoulders and they on hers, but now she had no one. No one at all who shared her burden. Her memories. And yet her tears didn’t seem to care about that. They welled up anyway, flowed freely, shaming her even in her solitude.

There was one more thing left in the box, but Lucretia didn’t want to look at it. Didn’t even want to acknowledge it. She sat holding Merle’s spinner, clutching it tightly so that her knuckles went white with the strain.

_You’ve come this far._

At length she set the spinner aside and reached into the box for the final time. She drew out another book. This one was spiral-bound, another recently acquired keepsake; Magnus having bought it shortly before Lup… went away.

Drawing was a newish hobby of Magnus’s. He was oddly self-conscious of his talents; only sharing them with Lucretia late at night as they sat with Fischer, sipping chamomile tea.

As she flicked through the pages now, Lucretia could almost taste the chamomile, feel Magnus’s breath near her ear as he waited for her feedback on his latest sketches. He never believed her when she said they made her want to pick up a brush herself. He thought she was being flippant, when in reality she was speaking her honest truth.

_There._

The woman in this sketch stood as though she had a spine made of gold. She seemed so sure of herself. Her expression was at once solid and soft; the ever-so-slight curve of her lip coupled with her raised eyebrow made it look as if she were about to crack a joke. In her eyes was wisdom; the perfect unity of youth and experience, the trials she’d been through seen by the artist not as wounds to be healed but as battle scars to be worn with pride.

“It’s you, Luc,” Magnus had said. “After, you know, your year alone.”

She’d merely stared at him, wordless.

“See? Your hair? Your…” He’d looked worried then, that he hadn’t captured her well enough. His hands shook as he tried to take the book back.

Lucretia had placed one of her own hands upon the page and the other on his wrist.

“I love it,” she’d said. “It’s beautiful.”

Now, swathed in blankets, Lucretia traced a finger around the lines that made up her own face. It was not the only drawing of her in there. But it was the only one that never failed to take her breath away. She still had trouble seeing herself in the woman on the page, especially today, when she felt lost and alone and uncertain. She longed to harness this stronger woman’s energy, if only for a while.

She recalled that year she’d spent on the run, the year all her friends had died and it was up to her to survive so they could be brought back. It had been terrifying, lonely, and she had learnt things about herself she could have done no other way. She’d worked on their behalf then, and by god she could do it now. The memories she alone held of them she would cherish, and one day she would return them, share them once more.

Lucretia gazed at the drawing for a long while, until a niggling sensation in her stomach told her virgo ass she’d been slacking for too long.

She packed away the two books and the spinner, but decided to keep the sweater and jorts on. She figured she might find it easier to work if she had something to remind her what she was working _for_.

One hand holding up Barry’s huge jorts, Lucretia pushed the door to her office open.

She was surprised to see her desk completely clean of ink; the salvaged paperwork neatly piled to one side. A tray sat in the middle of the desk, a steaming teapot, two cups, and a tin of biscuits arranged upon it. As she was puzzling over this, she realised there was someone sat waiting for her.

“Davenport!”

Lucretia was so startled she almost forgot to hold her jorts up. Davenport was staring at her, smiling innocently and swinging his feet, for the chair was not built for him and they did not reach the floor. For a moment Lucretia’s heart pounded furiously as she feared her clothes would trigger the captain’s memory. But he simply looked at her, kindly silent, before gesturing to her high-backed chair.

“Davenport,” he said.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them back, swallowed the lump in her throat. She waddled over to her chair and sat down, too self-conscious to look Davenport directly in the eye. He poured her some tea. She sipped it. Felt herself relax as the warmth flooded through her. He’d always known exactly how she liked her tea. Even with more than half his memory gone…

“Davenport,” he said. “Davenport.”

“Yes,” Lucretia replied, taking a biscuit from the tin. “It is.”

She caught his eyes then, held them. Her captain. The one person that remained of the life she’d chosen to both leave behind and preserve. What would she do without him, to steer her in the right direction, to anchor her into the here and now?

“Thank you, old friend,” she said.

As she crunched the biscuit, Lucretia thought of how Magnus had drawn her. Proud, elegant. Strong. Without meaning to, she sat up straighter in her chair. Then she swigged back the rest of her tea and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, drawing the paperwork towards her.

“Back to work,” she said.

Davenport gathered the tray and hopped down from his chair. She looked up at him as he opened the door. He winked at her, and her mouth twisted into a smile.

Maybe later, she would paint.


End file.
